Filming for Music Video

Hello. This past week my group and I were able to start filming our music video. We decided to film at the school first. We decided to film at the school because it is the most accessible location for all of us. We needed to film at our school's track and football field. In order to do this, we need to gather information about what sports were practicing at those locations because we didn’t want to disrupt the practices. After school, my group and I all met up and made our way to the track. We asked a couple of the athletes that were there if we were able to film at the location. They all told us that we could, but we still wanted to check with the coach just to make sure. We asked the coach and he told us that we were free to do whatever and to take our time. With that information, we found our spot and started to film the first part to our music video. 

Before we got to the field that day, we asked our friend Mila if she could help us with our music video. We needed another actress for our video to play a mean girl. We chose to have Mila for our video because she is reliable, and we knew she would be happy to help. Once we on the field and ready to film, we went over our storyboard and planning notes. We did this so that we knew how long each shot should be. We practiced the scene a couple of times before we started filming because we didn’t want to load the camera up with useless footage. My group and I also decided to film with a phone instead of the video camera because we are more familiar with the phone and the camera is a little bit better than the school issued video camera. We played the song as we filmed the video because it helped to keep the movements aligned with lyrics. Playing the song also helped to keep the lip sync aligned to the lyrics. 

We weren’t able to finish all of the filming at the school that day, so we decided to stay after school another day to finish up. We weren’t able to finish filming because some of our main actresses had to go. We also need to finish filming at our other locations. We need to schedule a plan for all of us to meet up at the locations to finish filming. Some of us have to work which makes it harder for us to get together to film. We still must film at our store location and the park location. The footage that was actually filmed came out perfect. We put the finished footage together and played the song over it and it synced in perfectly. We still need to add some transitions into the video because the cuts were rough and choppy. Hopefully we will be able to film the rest of our footage this weekend. 

Music Video Storyboard

   Hello! Today my group and I’s next step into making our music video was to create our storyboard. We utilized the storyboards in our last project and it ended up being extremely helpful. With a clear and percise storyboard to reference when we film it tell us exactly how we want our vision to be brought to life. In the first box which represents about 4 seconds of the song we will be shooting on a soccer feild and we will use a tracking shot to film the main girl (Ava) walking up to the villain (Alex) bad talking her. Then the next box is the next 4 seconds and Ava goes to slap Alex and the beat drops and the beginning of the lyrics begin. Then the next box is representing when the chorus starts which is 9 seconds long and it’s a tracking two shot. Then the next 9 seconds is the chorus again and it will be Ava still walking on the track lip syncing to the chorus. Then as you can see in the 5th box it jumps to a grocery store where we will film us dancing in the aisle for 17 seconds. The next box jumps to us in bayview park where we will continue to use a tracking shot while the next verse plays. Box 7 will be a flashback to show how the problem/ fight in the video had begun. Then the next box is back in bayview. We will continue to sing the next part of the song before it jumps back to the chorus. So far we had filmed in 3 different locations the feild, the grocery store, and the park and for our last two boxes we decided it would be cool if we shot us dancing in a combination of all locations. We will sing to the chorus again until the end finish time switching back and forth between all locations. And that is our set storyboard plan for filming our music video of Hollaback girl by Gwen Stefani. I am so excited to begin filming especially with such a detailed storyboard to help guide our vision.

Planning For Music Video Blog

   Hello ! My team and I are in the beginning process of planning for our music video project which is for the song Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani. We were all estastic when we realized we were going to be able to create or own style video for this song. We got into class and sat together we had a little bit of a vision of what we wanted the project to look like we didn’t have it scene by scene played out. We were excited to sit down and put our ideas together and on paper to bring our video to life. We all individually brainstormed for a few minutes thinking of just where to start. We knew that the planning stage was very vital to creating a successful end product. With being very organized we knew it would make the whole filming process much easier. It for sure did with our commercial project. So then we began. 

     The first thing that we did was watch the music video and pick which minute and 15 seconds we wanted to use for our video. We all agreed to use the first minute and 15 seconds which we thought was a good idea becuase the beginning sets the tone and includes the chorus twice. Then we googled the lyrics to section them off in different parts for how we wanted to film for each lyric line. So on a paper we wrote down each line and figured out how much time it took up. It ended up being a total of one minute and 13 seconds. As we went through we shared some good ideas of what we can act out for the lyrics. In the beginning we decided that we wanted to start off with a fight type scene becuase we felt as though the song was about a fight so we thought it was appropriate. During that time we also thought it would be a good idea to insert a flashback of why a fight was breaking out. And then it was time to think about our Mis en scene. 

    We needed to pick our locations next. So we thought it would be a good idea to shoot the first shot on our school’s soccer feild and then the next couple of ones of on our track. Then we came up with shooting in a grocery store as well to add some diversity and also in a park and then for the last 17 seconds which is the chorus to shoot a combination of us in all of our locations. Then we were expressed the importance of health and safety, so we will be having a first aid kit with us at all times and whenever we are driving to any location all of us will be wearing a seat belt. Our lighting will be bright. We will have props such as grocery carts, a ball, backpacks, and food. Our costumes will be as close to the original video as possible to give off the same vibes and follow that convention such as straight hair, chains, hoops, crop tank tops, jeans, and beanies. Overall we are very excited to start filming becuase our planning makes it seem like it’s going to be very fun to film.

Music Video Introduction

   Hello, so my group and I finally wrapped up our commercial and we are starting on a new project. This project is a music video! We are able to choose any song that we want but it can only be a 1.05 to 1.15 minute video. This project will be very different from our commercial project because we have to film it outside of school. The music video is also over half the length of what what our commercial was. My group and I are very exited to start this new video because we all love music and we had a great time doing our commercial project. I think that this project will be a lot better than the commercial because we will be able to show more of our creativity. We can choose any song that we want and we don’t have to represent any brands.
   The song that we chose to do was “Hollaback Girl” by Gwen Stefani. The song was released in 2005. We chose to use this song because we all love it and it was a song that we used to listen to when we were growing up. This is a very popular song among the media when it came out. It was even at the top of the charts for four weeks and remained as #2 in the year end Hot 100. As soon as we chose to do this song, I could see our music video appear in my head. The main reason that we chose this song is because it is very catchy and it will always get stuck in your head when listening to it.
   To get conventions about the music video we looked at the music video as well as other music videos for Gwen Stefani’s songs. To gather code conventions on the music video we used method that our teachers told us called CLAMPS. The C stands for Costumes. The costume in the music video is  mainly an early 2000s California street style. This style include beanies, tank tops, and low-rise jeans.  There was also school band and cheerleaders uniforms in the video. The L is for lighting. The lighting in the video is very bright. There is no dark or gloomy lighting, there is an upbeat tone to the video. The A stands for actors. There was a huge cast in the music video. Most of the actors were all young adults. Gwen Stefani also starred in the video. M stands for makeup. There was no outrageous makeup in the video. It was mainly pencil thin eyebrows and red lipstick and dark eyes. P stands for props the props were pom poms and band equipment. There was also a car and camera and big signs that spelled out  “ Bananas”.  And finally the S is for setting. The setting in the video was a school, a grocery store, and the street. There were no transitions in the video and the editing was very jumpy.  Each scene would just cut to each other. I am very exited to start my music video.

Editing Blog

Hello! Today my group and I finished the editing portion of our project. It took us a very long time to finish our editing mainly because there were so many technological difficulties. The first day that we wanted to start editing, none of the computers had Pinnacle Studios on them. When we finally got a computer that had Pinnacle Studios on it, we were not able to get our footage on it because our flash drive stopped working. Since this happened, we had to go back to the desktop computer that we dumped our footage on to and put our footage on to another flash drive. The desktop computer that we used took a very long time to load and we ended up wasting a lot of time waiting. My group decided to let someone else use the laptop that we were going to use that had Pinnacle Studios on it because we weren't using it at that moment, and we didn’t know how long it would take for the desktop to load and log on to my account. After a very long time, the desktop finished loading and we were able to get our footage onto the flash drive. I was able to find a laptop with Pinnacle Studios on it that was not in use. I logged on to it and we were able to get our footage onto the laptop. 

Another problem occurred with the laptop. When we tried to launch the Pinnacle Studios app, the app wouldn’t respond, only a small white square would show up on the screen. We assumed the app was just loading but after five minutes of waiting we decided to get help. I brought the laptop over to my teacher and asked them if they knew what I could do to solve the problem. They told me to go to a faculty member that specialized in fixing these issues. I gave him the computer and Pinnacle Studios was up and running within a couple of seconds. When I arrived back to my group, we began to import our footage onto Pinnacle Studios. When all our footage was done importing, we looked through all takes to find the best ones to use for our final product. We then organized the takes in the correct order that they need to be in. Before we knew it, the class was over, and we were barely able to get any editing done. 

Today was a professional study day at my school which means students get out early and classes are shorter. We only had around fifty minutes in that class and we still barely even started editing. Right when we got to class, we immediately took a laptop and logged on. When we got onto Pinnacle Studios, we looked at all our footage played together, and it honestly wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, I was actually somewhat impressed with it. The main issue that we noticed first was that the video was a little bit longer than it should be. We then had to slowly look through all the takes and cut out all tiny parts that wasted space. This was a difficult task because we only wanted to get rid of the tiny scenes where it was only silence and we didn’t want to cut out any dialogue. When we reached the goal of the thirty seconds, we watched the commercial again. It looked even better now. We wanted to add in some sound effects for the commercial, but we couldn’t find a working website that could convert a YouTube video to MP3. We asked a friend in another group if he could help us out and he sent us a website that fixed all of our troubles. We added in the sound of a school bell in the first shot so that the location was more clarified. We were going to add the signature Mcdonalds jingle over a shot at the end of the commercial, but we liked the result without better.We didn’t really have a lot to edit since it came out so good the first time around. The project isn’t due until Tuesday so if my group wants to make some last minute changes we still can.